Jiang Ran glanced at the message Wang Zhenguo had sent him and couldn't help raising an eyebrow.
Deep Realm Inspection Team?
Who would come up with a name like that?
But if Wang Zhenguo had gone out of his way to warn him, the organization was probably no ordinary group.
Jiang Ran's fingers tapped rapidly across the screen. "What does this Inspection Team do?"
A few seconds later, Wang Zhenguo's reply appeared. "It's a newly established special agency under the Federation, with extensive authority. It's specifically responsible for the in-depth exploration of the Abyssal Void.
I heard they've recruited quite a few registered Transcendents. Their equipment and resources are top-notch."
Jiang Ran's eyes shifted slightly as he read the message.
He thought of the two people who'd claimed to be from the Cultural Relics Bureau that morning.
After a moment's thought, he replied, "Get in touch with them for me. We'll talk inside the Abyssal Void."
Wang Zhenguo quickly replied with a single word: "Okay."
Jiang Ran put away his phone and hailed a cab home.
It was half past eleven at night.
Jiang Ran sat cross-legged in the middle of the living room, his consciousness sinking into the Profession Panel.
[Profession Basic Skill: Blood-Qi Circulation Method (Incomplete) Lv.1 (78/100)] [Ultimate: Lotus Brilliance Lv.1 (0/100)]
Jiang Ran didn't hesitate.
He put one point into the Blood-Qi Circulation Method.
Buzz...
The blood and qi in his body instantly surged.
A faint jade-like sheen spread across his skin. Beneath it, his muscles and bones tingled slightly, as though they were being tempered over and over.
[Blood-Qi Circulation Method (Incomplete) Lv.1 → Lv.2]
When the upgrade notification appeared,
Jiang Ran slowly opened his eyes. He hadn't expected strengthening the Blood-Qi Circulation Method to slightly increase the blood and qi in his body as well.
Then Jiang Ran took out a Blue Spirit Crystal and tried cultivating again.
Just over ten minutes later, he opened his eyes once more.
They were full of surprise.
Even at Level 2, the Blood-Qi Circulation Method let him absorb Spirit Crystals a full thirty percent faster than before.
If he could prepare his cultivation method and Profession Points ahead of time each time,
then in terms of cultivation speed,
he'd be right at the very top of the pyramid.
Jiang Ran then put his remaining three Profession Points into his ultimate skill.
The moment he spent the points...
An indescribable tremor welled up from the depths of his soul.
His consciousness seemed to be pulled into an endless, pitch-black void.
At the center of the void,
a blood-red lotus bud hovered silently, waiting to bloom.
The lotus turned slowly. With each rotation, countless tiny golden runes appeared on its petals.
When Jiang Ran focused his gaze on the lotus,
the golden runes abruptly lit up, transforming into streams of information that poured into the depths of his consciousness.
[Ultimate: Lotus Brilliance Lv.1 → Lv.3 (0/300)] [Draw on all of your blood and qi to condense a lotus phantom around your fist. Must be charged before use.]
Jiang Ran emerged from that wondrous state and returned to reality.
He lowered his eyes to his right hand.
At a thought,
Buzz...
A crimson torrent of blood and qi rose from his palm, rapidly taking shape.
In the space of half a second,
a blood-red lotus phantom the size of a fist, still closed in its bud,
hovered an inch above his palm.
The lotus turned slowly, faint golden runes flowing over its petals.
He willed the blood and qi to disperse, and the lotus phantom vanished without a sound.
"The charging time... Half a second is only enough to form the bud. To make it bloom completely would take two or three seconds." Jiang Ran considered it. "But the power..."
He recalled the shiver that had run through him just now.
Even as a mere bud, the lotus was already far more powerful than Buddha's Wrathful Vajra at its peak.
If it bloomed completely...
A flicker of anticipation crossed Jiang Ran's eyes.
The next morning.
Jiang Ran arrived at school on time and walked into the Grade 2 Class 15 classroom.
The class was a little more orderly than before.
The few troublemakers in the back row still weren't paying much attention,
but at least they weren't causing trouble anymore. They were just slumped over their desks, sleeping.
The other students, especially those in the middle and front rows, were paying much closer attention to the lesson.
[Chinese experience +4] [Chinese experience +3] [Chinese experience +5]
The notifications on the panel kept popping up.
By the end of the lesson, his Chinese skill had gained a full 68 experience points, more than ten more than yesterday.
[Chinese Lv.8 (583/800)]
At this rate, he'd level up in two or three days at most.
Jiang Ran gathered his lesson plans and prepared to leave the classroom.
As his gaze passed over the back row, he suddenly paused.
Li Hao wasn't sleeping.
The kid had his head down, completely absorbed in a book hidden inside his desk.
Jiang Ran walked over without a word and quietly came to a stop behind Li Hao.
An anatomy textbook lay open on the desk.
Li Hao was so engrossed that he didn't even notice Jiang Ran standing behind him.
"Changed your mind?"
Jiang Ran's voice was calm as he spoke without warning.
"Holy crap!"
Li Hao jolted in fright, nearly dropping the book on the floor.
He hurriedly stuffed it back into his desk. When he turned and saw Jiang Ran, he finally relaxed, an awkward look on his face. "T-Teacher Jiang..."
Looking at him, Jiang Ran found the whole thing a little amusing.
The last time they'd been in the counseling room, the kid had sworn he'd never study medicine, even if it killed him.
And now he was secretly reading anatomy, completely absorbed in it.
"Teacher Jiang, um..." Li Hao scratched his head, stumbling over his explanation. "Sometimes... you can't really control this kind of thing, you know..."
Jiang Ran stared at him for a moment, then shook his head with a quiet laugh.
He patted Li Hao's shoulder, his tone gentle.
"People's minds change. That's perfectly normal.
"What matters is whether the choice you're making now is something you truly want to do."
Li Hao stared blankly at Jiang Ran and opened his mouth as though he wanted to say something, but in the end, he only nodded firmly.
"Thank you, Teacher Jiang," he said softly.
Jiang Ran smiled, said nothing more, and turned to leave the classroom.
The rest of the day
passed routinely for Jiang Ran.
That afternoon at the Shooting Club,
Li Xintong's interception success rate had... skyrocketed. Jiang Ran had to go all out just to barely scrape out a win.
Jiang Ran guessed she must have used a divine ability,
and the experience notifications on his panel confirmed it.
[Compound Bow Shooting experience +13] [Moving Target Shooting experience +15] [Prediction skill experience +10]
He also successfully raised Moving Target Shooting to Level 5, earning two Profession Points.
However, when Li Xintong saw the surge of strength in Jiang Ran, there wasn't the slightest surprise in her eyes.
Clearly, she'd also guessed that Jiang Ran had entered the Abyssal Void before.
The two of them, like Old Chen, understood without needing to say a word.
As for Old Chen, he was noticeably more practiced at using his divine ability than he'd been yesterday.
At least, his exertion was no longer so stiff, and the blood and qi flowing through him when he defended himself was much smoother.
Of course, he still wasn't a match for Jiang Ran.
But Jiang Ran could feel Old Chen's ability to take a hit improving at a visible pace.
Last came Lin Xiaorou's tutoring session.
It was a bit of a shame.
The girl had called to cancel that evening.
He couldn't squeeze any experience points out of her.
Still... it wasn't as if Jiang Ran had done nothing.
A little after eleven that night,
Jiang Ran sat at his desk.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose and closed the ancient book he'd borrowed from Li Baishi.
He'd read the Classic of Mountains and Seas before, but only as a collection of myths and legends. He'd never studied it so seriously.
Now that he was really delving into it,
he realized its contents went far beyond what he'd imagined.
The Classic of Mountains and Seas alone described more than a hundred countries.
The people in those countries looked all kinds of strange.
It was hard to imagine what sort of extraordinary abilities these Ancestral People had possessed.
After all, they'd survived encounters with so many Exotic Beasts...
They couldn't possibly have been ordinary people.
Fortunately, he wasn't entirely without clues.
At least the people of the Kingdom of Hairy People spoke a modern language, which meant he could communicate with them.
Jiang Ran glanced at the time.
23:58.
Two minutes to go.
He put away the ancient book, walked to the center of the bedroom, and stood still, regulating his breathing.
The clock hand crept toward midnight.
The familiar feeling of disorientation arrived as expected.
When Jiang Ran opened his eyes again,
he was back in the living room of the old apartment building in the Abyssal Void.
The night outside was dark, and scattered fires flickered in the distance within the Safe Zone.
Jiang Ran didn't waste time. He went straight to the window, lifted a corner of the curtain, and looked toward the building the two people had entered the previous night.
The window on the third floor was now glowing faintly.
Through a gap in the curtains, he could see two figures moving around inside.
Jiang Ran waited patiently.
About five minutes later, the door opened.
Two men came out, one after the other. They were the same two from the previous night.
They had backpacks on and flashlights in their hands. It looked as though they were heading out.
At the sight of them, Jiang Ran immediately left the room and followed.
Once they reached the street,
the two men headed toward the edge of the Safe Zone together, talking in low voices as they walked.
Jiang Ran hung back at a distance.
He used the buildings along the street to stay hidden.
"That looks like the home of some famous novelist. There's bound to be plenty of good stuff inside," the Hairy Person said.
The man chuckled. "Sure, let's try our luck. But we'd better be careful. There are a lot of monsters in that area."
"What's there to be afraid of? There are two of us. If anything goes wrong, we can just run..."
They chatted as they walked, soon crossing the Safe Zone's perimeter and entering the outer area.
Jiang Ran followed far behind them.
Under cover of night, the two moved deftly through the streets along the edge of the Safe Zone, soon reaching a half-collapsed detached villa.
"This is the place."
The ordinary-looking man pointed at the pitch-black doorway and lowered his voice.
The two crept toward it, one after the other.
Before they went in, the man casually complained, "Old Zhang, how come you didn't get a SIM card this time? Weren't you supposed to add me on WeChat once you got out?"
Old Zhang patted his shoulder, smiling. "Ahem, I forgot, that's all. Next time for sure. Next time."
The villa's interior was a mess. The two shone their flashlights.
They headed straight for the basement entrance.
They had only just stepped into the darkness when roars and the sounds of fighting rang out from below.
They had clearly run into the monster lurking there.
The noise soon died down.
Before long, the ordinary-looking man's breathless, excited voice came from below. "We got one! It's a Spirit Crystal!"
As Jiang Ran listened, he made his way downstairs without a sound.
The basement reeked of blood.
The ordinary-looking man had his back to the entrance, bent over as he dug a Spirit Crystal from the corpse of a Monkey-Faced Scaled Beast, joy written across his face.
Behind him, Old Zhang was laughing too...
Only, as he laughed, his mouth stretched open.
His lips split so wide he looked nothing like a human, his gaze fixed greedily on the man's nape.
Drool dripped from his mouth. He was about to take a bite!
Just then, a hand suddenly reached out from the side.
It pressed firmly against the center of the Hairy Person's forehead.
His lunge was stopped dead.
The Hairy Person's pupils contracted sharply, and he couldn't help but freeze in surprise.
The man finally realized something was wrong. He whipped around and saw the scene.
Jiang Ran stood before the Hairy Person. He glanced at his mouth, furrowed his brow slightly, and said seriously,
"Your breath stinks pretty badly."
Before you continue